Virginia Dwan is one of the most influential figures in the history of twentieth-century American art. Her eponymously named galleries, the first established in a Los Angeles storefront in 1959, followed by a second in New York in 1965, became a beacon for influential postwar American and European artists. She sponsored the debut show for Yves Klein in the United States, and she championed such artists as Franz Kline, Robert Rauschenberg, Claes Oldenburg, Sol LeWitt, and Ad Reinhardt. Her Los Angeles gallery featured abstract expressionism, neo-dada, and pop, while the New York branch became associated with the emerging movements of minimalism and conceptualism. At the same time, the gallery's influence expanded to remote locations in Nevada, Utah, and Arizona, where Dwan sponsored such iconic earthworks as Robert Smithson's Spiral Jetty, Michael Heizer's Double Negative, and Walter De Maria's Lightning Field. Though Dwan was a major force in the art world of the sixties and seventies, her story and the history of her gallery have been largely unexplored until now. Published to coincide with an exhibition at the National Gallery of Art celebrating Dwan's gift to the Gallery of her extraordinary personal collection, From Los Angeles to New York: The Dwan Gallery, 1959 1971 explores her remarkable career. Alongside lush full-color images of one hundred leading artworks, the book deepens our understanding of the artistic exchanges Dwan facilitated during this age of mobility, when air travel and the interstate highway system linked the two coasts and transformed the making of art and the sites of its exhibition. James Meyer, the curator of the exhibition and the foremost authority on minimal art, contributes a essay that is a sophisticated and broad-ranging analysis of Dawn's legacy. Honoring Dwan's significant influence and impact on postwar art, From Los Angeles to New York is a rich and informative collection that will be treasured by fans of contemporary art.

To explore the Tarot is to explore ourselves, to be reminded of the universality of our longing for meaning, for purpose and for a connection to the divine. This 600-year-old tradition reflects not only a history of seekers, but our journey of artistic expression and the ways we communicate our collective human story. For many in the West, Tarot exists in the shadow place of our cultural consciousness, a metaphysical tradition assigned to the dusty glass cabinets of the arcane. Its history, long and obscure, has been passed down through secret writing, oral tradition, and the scholarly tomes of philosophers and sages. Hundreds of years and hundreds of creative hands-mystics and artists often working in collaboration-have transformed what was essentially a parlor game into a source of divination and system of self-exploration, as each new generation has sought to evolve the form and reinterpret the medium. Author Jessica Hundley traces this fascinating history in Tarot, the debut volume in TASCHEN's Library of Esoterica series. The book explores the symbolic meaning behind more than 500 cards and works of original art, two thirds of which have never been published outside of the decks themselves. It's the first ever visual compendium of its kind, spanning from Medieval to modern, and artfully arranged according to the sequencing of the 78 cards of the Major and Minor Arcana. It explores the powerful influence of Tarot as muse to artists like Salvador Dali and Niki de Saint Phalle and includes the decks of nearly 100 diverse contemporary artists from around the world, all of whom have embraced the medium for its capacity to push cultural identity forward. Rounding out the volume are excerpts from thinkers such as Eliphas Levi, Carl Jung, and Joseph Campbell; a foreword by artist Penny Slinger; a guide to reading the cards by Johannes Fiebig; and an essay on oracle decks by Marcella Kroll. About the series The Library of Esoterica explores how centuries of artists have given form to mysticism, translating the arcane and the obscure into enduring, visionary works of art. Each subject is showcased through both modern and archival imagery culled from private collectors, libraries, and museums around the globe. The result forms an inclusive visual history, a study of our primal pull to dream and nightmare, and the creative ways we strive to connect to the divine.